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Vickers Medium Machinegun
The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a name primarily used to refer to the water-cooled .303 inch machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The machine gun typically required a six to eight-man team to operate: one to fire, one to feed the ammunition, and the rest to help carry the weapon, its ammunition and spare parts. General Information The gun had a reputation for great solidity and reliability. Ian V. Hogg, in Weapons & War Machines, describes an action that took place in August, 1916, during which the 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps fired their ten Vickers guns continuously for twelve hours. They fired a million rounds between them, using one hundred new barrels, without a single breakdown. "It was this absolute foolproof reliability which endeared the Vickers to every British soldier who ever fired one." Service during WWII The Gun and its tripod were carried separately and were both heavy. The original design did not anticipate its being carried up jungle-covered mountains on men's backs, but such was the weapon's popularity, that men were generally content to man-pack it to all manner of difficult locations. The tripod would be set up to make a firm base, often dug into the ground a little and perhaps with the feet weighted down with sandbags. The water jacket would be filled with water around the barrel. The firing of the gun would make the barrel heat up, and conducted heat would then boil the water in the jacket, and steam would be carried away down a rubber pipe, to condense in a metal can. The condensed water could then be poured back into the jacket to top it up, but another function of the condenser tin was to hide the emissions of steam, that might give away the gun's position. This cooling system, though heavy, was very effective, and enabled the gun to keep firing far longer than air-cooled rival weapons. The loader sat to the gunner's right, and fed in belts of cloth, into which had been placed the rounds. The weapon would draw in the belt, push each round out of the belt and into the breach, fire it, and then drop the brass cartridge out of the bottom, to gather in a pile of spent brass underneath the weapon, while the cloth belt would continue through to the left side and wind up on the ground. One very unusual feature of the Vickers .303 MMG (medium machine gun) was that it was often used to fire indirectly at targets, whereas other weapons of similar type would only be used for direct fire. This plunging fire was used to great effect against road junctions, trench systems, forming up points, and other locations that might be observed by a forward observer, or zeroed in at one time for future attacks, or guessed at by men using maps and experience. Sometimes a location might be zeroed in during the day, and then attacked at night, much to the surprise and confusion of the enemy. New Zealand units were especially fond of this use. A white disc would be set up on a pole near the MMG, and the gunner would aim at a mark on it, knowing that this corresponded to aiming at the distant target. There was a special back-sight with a tall extension on it for this purpose. A British World War Two Vickers MMG platoon typically had one officer in command of four guns, in two sections of two, each with a crew and a small team of riflemen whose job was to protect the gun, and keep it supplied with ammunition. Category: Allied Weapons